When Timothée Chalamet accepted his SAG Award for portraying Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown’, he stood on stage and said something notable & revealing: “I’m in pursuit of greatness… I want to be one of the greats.” It was a revealing & direct statement. Rarely do actors, or anyone for that matter, so openly declare their ambition in such a public or even private setting.

Bob Dylan, the very man Chalamet was portraying, never spoke like this. He never seemed to pursue “greatness” in any public sense. He resisted definition, avoided explanation, and cringed at the idea of being labeled anything, whether it was prophet, poet, or revolutionary.

If Chalamet stood at the podium and openly declared his pursuit of greatness, Dylan spent a lifetime running from any attempt to place that word on him.

Chalamet represents the modern artist’s path: self-aware, intentional, willing to acknowledge the weight of influence. Dylan took the opposite approach, his greatness was something he tried to conceal, to reject even as the world insisted upon it. But just because Dylan never openly chased the title doesn’t mean he didn’t have an internal compass leading him. He was just as relentless, just as committed.

At first glance, these two approaches seem irreconcilable, one man boldly embracing the chase, the other refusing to admit there was ever a chase at all. But perhaps they share something fundamental: a deep understanding that greatness isn’t something you stumble into.

There’s an ancient tension at play here, the contrast between revelation and mystery, between those who declare their purpose and those who walk into it unknowingly. Some figures in history are called to stand on the mountaintop and proclaim their path for all to hear. Others are shaped in quiet, their journey understood only in hindsight perhaps. Yet both roads require some sort of faith, the unrelenting belief that something greater is unfolding, whether marked by public declaration or by a personal pursuit, both are driven by the same force.

Perhaps Chalamet’s openness and Dylan’s secrecy aren’t contradictions but reflections of the same truth: that purpose, once acknowledged and set in motion, takes on a life of its own, and rather than you leading it, it leads you.

For all his declarations, Chalamet does not create greatness just by speaking of it, just as Dylan does not erase it by denying it, but both are drawn by something unseen.

In the end, the shape and meaning of a life is not decided by how loudly it is declared or how carefully it is concealed. It is formed by what it serves, what it yields to, and ultimately, what call it answers to.

But what about you?

We are all shaped by something, whether we name it or not, whether we resist or embrace it. The question is not just whether we will achieve greatness, but what kind of greatness we are pursuing. Is it the kind that fades with time, or the kind that speaks of something eternal?

Because in the end, it is not ambition alone that defines a life, but what that ambition bows to, what result that ambition wishes to lead to. Some are driven by applause that fades, others by something that lasts even if there is no applause at all.

So what is shaping you? And when the time comes, what is it that you will have answered to?

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Written by Ben Joshua